He had two stern forefathers in his patrilineal heritage, his great-great-great grandfather and his great-great-grandfather John Hathorne. So he knew well that men could, cloaked in the countenance of goodness and piety, commit great sin. Here is Hawthorne describing them both starting with the great-great-great grandfather :. With knowledge of these biographical details, the reader can easily see the influence of his ancestors not only rise up in his drift into Dark Romanticism, but also in his writing, which was often set in colonial New England and heavily weighted with the moral complexity of his Puritan background and perhaps the deeds of his ancestors in those communities.
Which brings us to his most acclaimed work. The Scarlet Letter , a work rife with moral complexity. The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced novels in America and became an instant best seller, selling over 2, copies in the first two weeks. It has been praised for its sentimentality and moral purity by the likes of D. Lawrence , who said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination.
Though Edgar Allan Poe -- a fellow author in the Dark Romantic Movement and influential literary critic -- wrote negative reviews of Hawthorne's stories. Poe did not admire stories that were allegorical and moral in nature so his criticism was in form. Though even he begrudgingly acknowledged that Hawthorne's style "is like purity itself. Now I am going to break from my biographical narrative to add a personal note. After a lifetime of reading, Nathaniel Hawthorne has emerged as one of my absolute favorite authors of all time.
If you are not having fun while reading Hawthorne you are doing it wrong! For instance, My Kinsman, Major Molineaux is a comic short story and should be enjoyed as such it does have a "tragic" ending. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor,—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace,—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known.
He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.
So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist—may be now and henceforth removed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a part of the American Renaissance that occurred in the 19th century, which is considered the romantic period in American literature. It was slightly old-fashioned even when he wrote it. It is very deliberate, with measured rhythms, marked by formal decorum. It often prefers the abstract or generalized to the concrete or specific word. Since most of his stories consisted of moral, cautionary tales about guilt, sin and retribution, many readers consider his work to be dark and sometimes gloomy.
Hawthorne continued to write more novels throughout the s until he was appointed to the consulship in Liverpool, England by his old college friend President Franklin Pierce.
While in Europe he wrote The Marble Faun, based on his sight-seeing experiences in Italy, and Our Old Home before moving back to his house in Concord in the early s. Hawthorne suffered from poor health in the s and died in his sleep during a trip to the White Mountains with Franklin Pierce on May 19, He is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
Sources: Waggoner, Hyatt H. Nathaniel Hawthorne American. University of Minnesota Press, Striving to rekindle his earlier productivity, he found little success.
Drafts were mostly incoherent and left unfinished. Some even showed signs of psychic regression. His health began to fail and he seemed to age considerably, hair turning white and experiencing slowness of thought.
For months, he refused to seek medical help and died in his sleep on May 19, , in Plymouth, New Hampshire. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Louisa May Alcott was an American author who wrote the classic novel 'Little Women,' as well as various works under pseudonyms. American essayist, poet and practical philosopher, Henry David Thoreau was a New England Transcendentalist and author of the book 'Walden.
Horror fiction author H. Cummings was a 20th-century poet and novelist known for his innovations in style and structure.
0コメント